I’m rushing, but I wanted to share this email I scribbled out this morning. It’s a bit blunt, says more than I perhaps should at this point — but Philip Zelikow‘s departure as Condi Rice’s Counselor is very bad for those hoping for a more enlightened Bush administration foreign policy course.

It will probably be a small gathering — but those who want to meet me tomorrow morning in Vienna, Austria — I will be meeting some folks at about 11 am (at Cafe Central) (I might be a little late as I will be coming directly from the Airport).

I hear that Leon Trotsky used to hang out at the Cafe Central in Vienna. I will be arriving Wednesday morning in Vienna and departing Friday to participate in a conference on “The Role of Think Tanks in the Political Process of the EU and the US” sponsored by the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation.

Edward Luce and Demetri Sevastopulo have a thoughtful piece in the Financial Times anticipating the impact of the Iraq War narrative on the American psyche, particularly as of Sunday when the “Iraq War will enter its 1,347th day, thus overtaking the US’s involvement in the second world war.” Some key excerpts.

The Financial Times‘ Philip Stephens published a very useful and interesting take on he rise of realism and fall of democracy-focused international idealism in U.S. foreign policy. Regrettably the article, “Democracy Falls Victim to Foreign Policy Realism,” is not available without registering and/or subscribing — but I still want to link it.

This is a fascinating, sober piece by Harvard University’s Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou on Israel-Palestine problems that looks at Hamas as an evolving, “astute” political player that needs to be engaged one way or another in any new effort at regional deal-making in the Middle East.

Here is a decent UPI article capturing the essential themes of a program I participated in on Monday at the Hudson Institute titled “Is Democracy Good for the Middle East?” (audio version available here/MP3 download) I said a number of things which can be seen on C-Span’s coverage of the program, and which has been…

This is interesting. Seven hours before I posted my piece on Marshall Wittman as the midwife of a McCain-Lieberman tie-up, Mark Schmitt had something similar up at Tapped. I suggest that McCain will win the Republican primary and bring Lieberman into the dance.

There are some TWN readers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, despite the comments of one student I met recently at the colonial era college, Washington College, who first asked “What’s a blog?” after a lecture I gave there. After I responded, he said, “I don’t think we have blogs on the Eastern shore.

My good friend, Matt Stoller of MyDD, has scolded me just a bit for some minor swipes I took at the leftish blogosphere. I probably deserved the swat.